News from Northside Drive Baptist Church

     "The Bible's gymnasium of prayer is the Book of Psalms." Eugene Peterson said that. I think he is right.
     The Psalms contain the full-body-pull-ups of praise. They have the "drop and give me 20" push-ups of confession, plus the stomach crunches of lament. Also, there is the endless treadmill of longing, "How long O Lord, how long...?"
     All who go on retreat and pray with the monks at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, GA, know of the ancient power of the Psalms. The monastic brothers pray all 150 Psalms every month! Imagine that---chanting three Psalms a day! Think how the language, the passion, the permission for complaint, the encouragement of devotion, and the lifelike up-and-down swells of the Psalms would infiltrate your life. In essence...one's essence...would become prayer itself!
     While we Northside Drivers worship in the chapel this summer, we will pay more attention to this poetry that is the combustion engine of the Bible. On one Sunday we will chant a Psalm. On another Sunday we will sing a Psalm to a familiar hymn tune.
     This ancient liturgical practice of chanting/singing Psalms is oddly relevant. Why do you think Gen-Yers travel to Iona, Scotland; and Gen-Xers flock to Taize, France? These are wells of ritual. They draw from deep waters that quench spiritual thirst in ways that the sprinkler system of a projector screen can't.
     Twice in the New Testament epistles, we are encouraged to "admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord."
     Forget not that the early church's only hymnal was The Psalms. However, soon they added new hymnody born out of their experience in Christian community and with Jesus Christ. Some of these songs were commandeered, bootlegged, from Greek poems. For instance, the "Christ Hymn" in Colossians may have been a philosophic song extolling wisdom.
     Many hymn writers have followed suit. For instance, the tune to A Mighty Fortress is Our God may have its roots in the taverns of Germany! And Amazing Grace may have been an English ballad (one theory is that it was a slave song overheard by John Newton himself).
     Particularly in England, new spiritual songs were not met without opposition. The old-guard insisted on singing psalms only. In fact, their resistance is referenced in the rousing hymn, We're Marching to Zion: "Let those refuse to sing who never knew our God. But children of the heavenly king may speak their joys abroad!"
     Northside Drive Baptist Church's worship is a rich liturgical tapestry of hymns and spiritual songs; and the texture will be even more elegant and intimate as we relish the psalms we will sing this summer.